You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.
No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?
Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse.
If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.
Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.
To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.
Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.
I became intrigued with colour theory. The absurd pronouncements of the Colour Institute, a group that decides what colours are hot each year or season, amused me.
I sometimes like to tinker with poems that have failed, ones that I have sent aside. Even years afterward, I will revisit them if there is something about them that I cannot give up on.
An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.
I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have.
The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken.
Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.
Reading should be a repeat performance.
The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.
The poet must decide not to impose his feelings in order to write without sentimentality.
Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem.
I would not say I chose to write long poems on a conscious level. The long poem has been a relative constant.
The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like.
The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.
